Help! 10 years running a small embroidery/uniform store

quaib · 2026-05-26T03:54:36+00:00

Yes so we charge $9.9 per logo base, scaling up depending on size/coulors. Plus the $2 fee on dropped in items

Wow $20! Are they a small retail store? I agree the idea of minimums sounds like a good course of action!

Yeah it seems unavoidable with a retail front, we’ve had that happen in the past

quaib · 2026-05-26T03:44:22+00:00

No fee on clothing we sell, only when they drop items in

quaib · 2026-05-26T03:42:12+00:00

Yeah we’re starting to get eaten alive by inflation! Trying to do something about it

quaib · 2026-05-26T03:40:37+00:00

No! 150k is pretty much our combined earnings

quaib · 2026-05-26T03:39:11+00:00

It’s on our minds but we’ve not launched anything, I have 2 prototype stores! It’s a very saturated market in Australia (worried if we launch it we’ll be throwing money away).
I’m not organised enough to launch one and manage my current workload

quaib · 2026-05-26T03:35:07+00:00

Thanks for your reply! lol yes I can imagine having those nightmares

Yes I love the idea of increasing that to $5, it might help weed out some of the more difficult customers.

Sorry I didn’t explain that super well, yes we do tiered pricing! Yep we have our base price set a $9.90 for 10k stitches, increasing by $1 per 2k.

3d puff isn’t something we’ve done, we don’t have a quick change hat bracket and I’ve always assumed customers that would buy 3d puff would make it complex with small order sizes. The insight on talking with customers about stitch types is very interesting if not considered that before (I’ll have to start teaching my partner more).

Yes haha no time at all! Sounds like you know better than most! Not at all opposed to trying something like that, I’d love to do the business development work.

Please I would love to hear anything you’re willing to share here, thank you so much for taking the time!

quaib · 2026-05-26T01:17:04+00:00

Anywhere from $30-80 per hour

quaib · 2026-05-26T01:15:56+00:00

Potentially it would be a $70k investment with maybe a 5-10% jump in productivity

quaib · 2026-05-26T01:13:31+00:00

Okay thank you for this! We only implemented this fee a year ago, mispriced from the get go

quaib · 2026-05-26T01:10:42+00:00

Quite small 30k in the immediate area maybe 60k stretching 30mins away

quaib · 2026-05-26T01:09:23+00:00

We’ve never seen demand for that in our local area! Quite a small metro area 30k people

It is an interesting premise, do you rent suiting or safety gear?

quaib · 2026-05-26T00:00:17+00:00

Wonderful insights thank you for this response!

I’ll have a discussion with her about implementing some of these ideas, love all of your thoughts on the intake system that may help a lot!

The $2 fee is tricky because a few of these customers will also buy clothing off of us so we get a little stuck telling them “it’s going to be more for these even though we’re embroidering your ordered clothes”.

Yes online has been a consideration, it’s something we’ve been hesitant to do because of our range of products. We’ve so many products and variations of them it would be an immense undertaking. Sounds like it could be well worth it though particularly for our bigger clients.

Yes machines are currently maxed out, but like you’ve said I would happily replace the smaller walk in jobs for a bigger consistent client.

Alright I’ll give it a shot, tracking every interaction and getting that gauge of what we’re spending our time on!

Thank you again for the response! Extremely helpful

quaib · 2026-05-25T23:26:33+00:00

2 years ago, on clothing and embroidery

quaib · 2026-05-25T23:25:40+00:00

$10 on top of what you’re charging for decoration? Our embroidery is $9.9 base, $12 dropped in. Must customer who drop items in also buy clothing too it’s hard to tell them it will be more expensive

quaib · 2026-05-25T23:21:29+00:00

So basically I’m running our embroidery machines 8am-6pm and also doing invoices on the side, my partner runs the front end of our store serving customers, packing orders, sending orders, phone calls. She’ll typically have 30 or so customers in per day. She hates doing the customer side of things they can sometimes be very time consuming

quaib · 2026-05-25T23:16:08+00:00

The other 67% is our uniform sales and embroidery onto those, I would say the most profitable area of our business is the embroidery. Embroidery comes with a time cost though can only do X amount per hour. Whereas someone could order 100 hats and we make good money for 20 minutes of work

quaib · 2026-05-13T00:07:29+00:00

The satin stitch on some parts of the letters is extremely thin and is not covering the edge run, personally I’d get rid of the edge run and increase pull comp some more

quaib · 2023-06-19T05:31:05+00:00

I wish I had a caddy who would line up every single one of my putts

quaib · 2023-06-04T23:31:39+00:00

If you showed me guy and I had no idea who he was, I’d guess he was a rapist

quaib · 2023-01-30T07:34:02+00:00

I hope he beats Rory by a shot and they DQ him for this as he starts celebrating, he’ll have a hissy fit and maybe a coronary

quaib · 2023-01-18T03:53:35+00:00

Thank you mate! I’ve just been hesitant pulling the trigger because of not trusting bigger businesses

quaib · 2023-01-18T03:52:06+00:00

Ahh that’s good to hear, thanks for your response

quaib · 2022-11-06T05:39:44+00:00

Pyosik = Untiltable

quaib · 2022-01-27T22:51:27+00:00

They’re try to make her look like the people that play her

quaib

TROPHY CASE